Today is Blog Action Day and bloggers the world over are writing about Climate Change this year, so here is our contribution.

pic: treehuggerClimate change seems like an insurmountable problem, one that's too big and tough to tackle. In our everyday busy-ness do we really need something else to worry about. Let alone find the time to fix: Kids to drop off at school. A boss to please. Performance appraisels. Tax returns. Grocery Shopping. Now climate change too!

Surely it's the job of scientists and government to bring about the changes to reduce the human impact on the climate?

Climate change is not a singular problem, and needs a multitude of responses on many different levels to tackle. Can the ordinary Jo/anne in the street make a difference? We think so. Here are some thoughts on how...

Be aware. Be very aware.
Climate Change is real, it's effects will be catastrophic, and we have a very small window of opportunity to act before its too late. The time for climate skepticism is over. Yes there may be a few maveric scientists out there that believe human activity (anthropogenic) has nothing to do with the rise in global temperatures, melting of glaciers and thawing of perma-frost. The media has also given some crackpots more airtime then they deserve because they like a juicy story or need to provide a "balanced viewpoint" (know the difference betw fact/opinion?). Unfortunately Climate Change has not been cooked up (a conspiracy theory) by thousands of scientists wanting to enforce a new world order. Deal with it. Scientists have been fighting for over twenty years to get governments to actually do something about the problem. They've largely been ignored.

We're already over limit. Current levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are 390 parts per million. Scientists (and recently the head of the UN's Panel on Climate Change) now say a safe limit is 350 ppm. Nasa's James Hansen, who first raised Climate Change to the US Govt twenty years ago: "If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm."

If you're looking for a conspiracy, look at the climate denialists like ExxonMobile et al, the corporate greenwashers, the false climate solutions.

Some resources to check out:
If movies are your thing - 11th hour, An Incovenient Truth, The Age of Stupid
If reading is your thing - Heat, Bending the Curve, Scorched, Boiling Point, The Fire Dogs of Climate Change
If animation is your thing - Story of Stuff
If blogs float your boat - George Monbiot, DeSmogBlog, RealClimate, ClimateProgress
If Facebook is your thing - 350 group
If sport is your thing - Bokke Go Green, Lewis Pugh
If music is your thing - Dave Matthews Band

De-sheep.
So what can be done? Realise that we'll need to shift our mindset, that changes will be necessary. Simply put we're consuming too much - we have to stop what we're doing to alter our trajectory.

I have nothing against sheep. In fact they're pretty remarkable animals (they've taught themselves to roll over cattle grids to get to farmers veggie patch). But whilst behaving like a flock of sheep suits, well, sheep, we humans will need to disconnect from certain cultural behaviours. Keeping up with the Joneses. Baaaa. Buying plastic junk. Baaa. Driving gargantuan personal four wheel drive tanks in suburbia. Baaaaa. Flying up or down the country for 1 hour meetings. Baaa. Allowing a monopolistic strangle-hold on our energy. Baaa. You get the picture.

Once the shift has been made nothing will be the same. Blue pill or Red one?

Know your footprint.
The problem starts with us. Yes industry can be blamed. Mining is evil, right? The Government is not doing enough... But charity starts at home. So why not face your addiction and then go for counselling. If the problem is too much carbon dioxide, then we need to collectively reduce our individual carbon footprints. (Getting the heavy users to do the same will be more difficult, but still possible, see political action below).

The idea is to reduce your ecological footprint and save money at the same time. But first you need to know how bad your situation is.

There are several carbon calculators out there that can be used:
Climate Action Partnership - the one we use and used by Project 90x2030
WWF - on your mobile ( MyCO2Print calculator, sms "CO2" to 34017 )
Trees and Food for Africa - the first SA calculator, guaranteed tree-friendly
BP - does the irony not hurt...
Virgin Active - members only, so haven't checked it out

Be the change.
Interesting aside - did Gandi actually say "We need to be the change we want to see in the world"? It sounds like something he would have said, and it's a cool saying and all, and his grandson remembers him saying it, but it was first quoted (that I can find) by his grandson fifty years after his death.

Here's something someone else said: "A lot of people are waiting for Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi to come back — but they are gone. We are it. It is up to us. It is up to you."

I suppose the saying of it is not that important, but rather the acting on it. So how do we act to reduce our footprint and our bills. There are lots of answers to this and plenty of places to read for inspiration.

Simply put - use less electricity, travel less and change your purchasing habits. It's easy to measure the effect of the first two directly. The impact of changing purchasing habits is more difficult to quantify (try calculating that your pizza travelled over 80 000 kilometres in food miles (kilometres?) and the associated carbon cost... it ain't easy).

We were able to save 40% of our peak winter spend on electricity compared with last year and it didn't cost us anything extra. We simply stopped what we were doing. We already had geyser blankets installed and were using cfls instead of incandescents. Our peak winter usage for June 2008 was 21.73 kWh per day, this year over the same period the average checked in at 12.82 kWh per day.

What did we do? Turned off one of our geysers, stopped using one of our wall-mounted panel heaters and paid more attention to turning off appliances that were in standby mode. No rocket science. The shower that we use has a low-flow showerhead which saves not just on water but on the cost of electricity as we are using less heated water to achieve the same effect.

Small, simple solutions can make a big difference.

Support your comrades
There are non-governmental and grassroots organisations in South Africa doing fantastic work and directly reducing the impact of climate change. These are the good guys and should be supported financially and in other ways (volunteering, donating items, spreading the word about them).

South Africa is in a unique position. We are one of the world's highest carbon polluters, measured as CO2 emitted per person. Thanks mainly to Eskom's dirty coal power plants, other big polluters like Sasol, and fossil fuel reliant agriculture. We also have a majority in abject poverty living alongside some of the worlds wealthiest people. (We've now overtaken Brazil as the country with the widest gap between rich and poor). So we have a moral imperative to try and help where we can.

Organisations like Soil for Life, Abalimi Bezekhaya, Food and Trees for Africa and others are helping to reduce atmospheric CO2 through vegetable and tree planting initiatives and at the same time helping to uplift the lives of others. So for your buck you are contributing to alleviating climate change and doing something to help the not so fortunate.

Project 90x2030 is doing great work by starting clubs in schools where the kids get to measure their collective footprint and then start cutting their carbon.

Also see the work being done by the Goedgedacht Trust in a rural setting.

Check out other local environmental activist organisations: groundWork, Earthlife Africa, SafeAge, Biowatch, Greenpeace SA

Become politically active.
When the era of apartheid passed so did widespread social and political activism. Most of my generation are pretty apathetic when it comes to mobilising - getting off our butts and going to protests, writing a letter, attending a meeting, boycotting companies and countries etc. Indeed there are very few people standing up and organising these actions outside of the trade union / labour movement.

Yet there still remains much to rally about however - crime, corruption, HIV/Aids, non-delivery of services, workers rights... add climate change to that list.

Eskom is a fossil fuel dinosaur that needs to be made extinct in its current form. Nuclear power plants should be opposed. Land development without proper planning needs to be opposed. Animal rights need to be entrenched. Climate Change needs urgent action by ministers in government.

This is really one area that South African's need to become more aware (catch a wakeup). We were living in London when over a million people turned out to protest the war in Iraq. It was awesome to see so many people coming together for a common cause. Tony Blair went ahead anyway, but look where he is today... Tony who?

The most important meeting about our future on this planet is about to take place in December in Copenhagen, Denmark. The worlds politicians are gathering to negotiate a new treaty on Climate Change that will replace the ineffective Kyoto treaty.

We need to back organisations like 350, Avaaz and others and insist on a treaty that is ambitious, fair and binding. Oct 24 is the BIG day on the climate action calendar. Take a look at the events planned near where you live and if there isn't one then step up to organise your own.